Quotes & Sayings About Orchestra

But a large symphony orchestra basically is a repertory company and it has a very enormous repertoire and it is important for the performers to be able to know how to shift focus so that they instantly become part of the sound world that a particular repertoire demands. — Michael Tilson Thomas

Didn't know anyone could see it," Samuel said. "You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only - and that note unchanging sorrow. I'm not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat. — John Steinbeck

Haute couture is like an orchestra, for which only Balenciaga is the conductor. The rest of us are just musicians, following the directions he gives us. — Christian Dior

Shared leadership ... is less like a an orchestra, where the conductor is always in charge, and more like a jazz band, where leadership is passed around ... depending on what the music demands at the moment and who feels most moved by the spirit to express the music. — Phillip C. Schlechty

For me it always comes down to what is a good song and I'm very old fashioned in the way that I like to make songs that have something classic about them whether you can play them with an orchestra or an electro synthesizer or an acoustic guitar. — Marc Almond

People clutch onto each other, but the orchestra plays on, because when everything else in life fails, there still has to be music — Anonymous

The problem is, when you're working with orchestras, you only get the orchestra for about two hours before the performance to pull it all together, and that doesn't sound like a real collaboration. — Andrew Bird

Please follow me because I have to follow him and he isn't here. — Eugene Ormandy

So when you enjoy the beats, the rock music - maybe even toned down with an orchestra - you are enjoying the spirit of the black race. And that's what I emphasize to the students. — Warren Jeffs

I admire Tom Ades: he's a brilliant conductor, and he gets just the right hard, brilliant sound from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra for Russian music. — Charles Hazlewood

I was in this public high school in Princeton, and it had this topnotch jazz program - if you were a musician of any kind of caliber, your holy grail was to be in that orchestra. It was that claim to fame of the school, of the town, other than the university. But it was better than the university band. — Damien Chazelle

It has to be able to play at the maximum expression and communication in every style, and the only way you can do that is - like Verdi said - working with a file, every day, little by little, until the orchestra's collective qualities emerge. — James Levine

Essentially, the [New York] Philharmonic is just like any other orchestra-they all have the spirit of kids, and if you scratch away a little of the fatigue and cynicism, out comes a 17-year-old music student again, full of wonder, exuberance and a tremendous love of music. — Zubin Mehta

We are musical notes emanating from the quantum string section of a grand symphonic orchestra. — Kane Freeman

When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line. — David Del Tredici

It was a girl playing a harp, like in an orchestra. It was in this tree at our campsite. And since it was breezy weather that weekend, the girl's arms were almost always turning. — Paul Fleischman

To his orchestra Stop da music, stop da music! You're supposed to follow da music, not chase it all over da place. — Jimmy Durante

For me the whole world is like a gigantic theater in which I am the only spectator without opera glasses. The orchestra plays the prelude to the third act, the stage is far away as in a dream, my heart swells with delight - and you want to blind me with a pair of half-ruble spectacles? — Isaac Babel

I am still very proud of that concert. In America, the (musicians') connection with the conductor is as with management - it becomes political. You cannot conduct properly in this environment. I hate this enemy situation between management and orchestra members. — Neeme Jarvi

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms. — Ruggiero Ricci

Downstairs, I could hear the return of a long-lost sound: Amy making breakfast. Banging wooden cupboards (rump-thump!), rattling containers of tin and glass (ding-ring!), shuffling and sorting a collection of metal pots and iron pans (ruzz-shuzz!). A culinary orchestra tuning up, clattering vigorously toward the finale, a cake pan drumrolling along the floor, hitting the wall with a cymballic crash. — Gillian Flynn

I never thought that I would write orchestra music, but in fact I did write a group of orchestra pieces. — Paul Lansky

The conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound. He depends, for his power, on his ability to make other people powerful. — Benjamin Zander

The singers all loathe the sight of one another, the chorus despises the singers, they both hate the orchestra, and everyone fears the conductor; the staff on one prompt side won't talk to the staff on the opposite prompt side, the dancers are all crazed from hunger in any case ... — Terry Pratchett

The mysterious manner in which this growing sense of unity commingles with a sense of utter goodness is worth noting. It arises by no effort of mine; rather does it come to me out of I know not where. Harmony appears gradually and flows through my whole being like music. An infinite tenderness takes possession of me, smoothing away the harsh cynicism which a reiterated experience of human ingratitude and human treachery has driven deeply into my temperament. I feel the fundamental benignity of Nature despite the apparent manifestation of ferocity. Like the sounds of every instrument in an orchestra that is in tune, all things and all people seem to drop into the sweet relationship that subsists within the Great Mother's own heart. — Paul Brunton

These groups within a society can he distinguished according as to whether, like an army or an orchestra, they function as a single body; or whether they are united merely to defend their common interests and otherwise function as separate individuals. — Herbert Read

Well, there's another set forward, you see. Up to now you couldn't stand all this dance and jazz music. It was too superficial and frivolous for you. Now you have seen that there's no need to take it seriously and that it can all the same be very agreeable and delightful. And by the way, the whole orchestra would be nothing without Pablo. He conducts it and puts fire into it. — Hermann Hesse

The truth of an orchestra is heard when they try to find their common notes before the show. All those strings and tubes and odd plunking things straining in different directions; an orchestra is merely a mob of single-minded maniacs who every so often condescend to work together, and then, mostly, they soar - they ascend - they give us wings.

Then they finish and bow and grumble and stomp off to their grotty little hovels muttering to themselves. Honestly, music is a miracle. You have no idea. — Kelly Gardiner

Ordinary society is, in this respect, very like the kind of music to be obtained from an orchestra composed of Russian horns. Each horn has only one note; and the music is produced by each note coming in just at the right moment. In the monotonous sound of a single horn, you have a precise illustration of the effect of most people's minds. How often there seems to be only one thought there! and no room for any other. It is easy to see why people are so bored; and also why they are sociable, why they like to go about in crowds - why mankind is so gregarious. It is the monotony of his own nature that makes a man find solitude intolerable. Omnis stultitia laborat fastidio sui: folly is truly its own burden. Put a great many men together, and you may get some result - some music from your horns! A — Arthur Schopenhauer

Movies are a medium of expression like a symphony orchestra ... or a painter's brush and canvas. — Walt Disney

Every orchestra I know, every opera house I know, is desperately looking around trying to find new talent, new composing talent, supporting young composers, supporting new ideas, supporting new ways of getting the message across. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

Gioacchino Rossini, the composer of William Tell and many other operas, had a good grasp of the relationship between music and food: "What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions." If — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I come to New Orleans so often that, one day soon, someone's going to declare me a native. I love the food. I love the music. I serve on the board of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. — Soledad O'Brien

My ex-wife was trying to be nice once, so she took me to a concert in Los Angeles. I went with her to Symphony Hall, and the orchestra was playing. When the show started, the spotlight was sharp on this one man (Andres Segovia) and he had sombrero on and his guitar propped up like this and, oh man ... he was a master ! - I really heard it. That one guitar sounded like a whole orchestra to me. — B.B. King

What appeals to me about an American music directorship is the involvement of the conductor with the orchestra and the community. I think that's a fantastic thing. In Europe, being principal conductor means merely that you're the person who does most of the concerts. For me, that simply isn't enough. — Jeffrey Tate

Damn it, it wasn't right. When she lay abed at night, she shouldn't see charging boars and violent tussles. She should dream of the scent of night-blooming jasmine and the texture of organdy and the distant strains of an orchestra playing a stately sarabande. As he had, all those freezing, damp nights.
As he would, in all the bitter years to come.
What had she called him, last night? An insufferable, arrogant cad. Yes, he was.
He wanted Cecily pining for him forever, dreaming she could tame him, yearning for the tender love he could never, ever give.
He wanted her to remember the old Luke, not fantasize about some uncivilized beast.
And if this "werestag" had eclipsed the memory of their kiss with his gory midnight rescue . . .
Luke just would have to do it one better, and give Cecily a new memory to occupy her thoughts. An experience she could never forget. — Tessa Dare

So many times, I've seen conductors that, every time they have a thought, they stop the orchestra and say it, and I can see the orchestra rolling their eyes and saying, 'Oh, God, he stopped again.' So there's a technique to rehearsing. — Joshua Bell

I've always been fascinated by music and sounds. I was lucky to receive proper classical training as an orchestra player and I'm always learning as a composer, looking to create new flavors and colors. — Lior Ron

The American drummer is a one-man percussion orchestra. — Max Roach

In symphonic music, when you are conducting, you do the same thing. You are feeling the whole orchestra, thinking ahead so you can prepare for a change. — David Amram

Deep inside I feel that this world we live in is really a big, huge, monumental symphonic orchestra. I believe that in its primordial form, all of creation is sound and that it's not just random sound, that it's music. — Michael Jackson

Aromatherapy without massage is like an orchestra without a conductor — Robert Tisserand

When you hear a large symphony orchestra. for instance, in a concert hall, there's a big, sweeping sound that just doesn't get on to a record. — Teddy Wilson

After I learned the piano, I went on to learn percussion, the tuba, b-flat baritone, French horn, trombone, trumpet, most of the instruments in the orchestra. Trumpet was my instrument. — Quincy Jones

I think it's a very important collaboration between the conductor and the orchestra - especially when the conductor is one more member of the orchestra in the way that you are leading, but also respecting, feeling and building the same way for all the players to understand the music. — Gustavo Dudamel

Mostly this problem is contained in the fact that the US makes it so difficult for Canadians to get green cards (you heard it here), but if an American orchestra really wants a player, they have their ways. — Lara St. John

I don't walk on stage unless I'm playing with a orchestra. But when I play a recital, I'm sort of on a scooter, and I just scoot very quickly on stage, and they're saying, wow, look at this. He's so fast. — Itzhak Perlman

It's difficult to remember when you haven't played it before. — Eugene Ormandy

The Listening Exercise
Relax. Close your eyes. Try for several minutes to concentrate on all of the sounds you hear in your surroundings, as if you were hearing an orchestra playing its instruments. Little by little, try to separate each sound from
the others. Concentrate on each one, as if it were the only instrument playing. Try to eliminate the other sounds from your awareness.
When you do this exercise every day, you will begin to hear voices. First, you will think that they are imaginary. Later, you will discover that they are
voices of people from your past, present, and future, all of them participating with you in the remembrance of time.
This exercise should be performed only when you already know the voice of your messenger.
Do this exercise for ten minutes at a time. — Paulo Coelho

Every time I open the paper, there's some symphony orchestra collapsing somewhere in the United States. What the hell is going on? And then you find out that the board members try to run these things as businesses. — Brice Marden

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life. — Dale Carnegie

It really was truth or consequences, and Billy went with truth. It was just incredible." Forsaking public prominence, Strayhorn found personal freedom in service to the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Now there might not be a Billy Strayhorn Orchestra. But there was a Billy Strayhorn. — David Hajdu

The other saxophones, except as solo instruments, really don't have much point in the orchestra. — Gerry Mulligan

If you think about how long it takes to write a piece of music for an orchestra, it's outrageous to me, outrageous. — Gail Zappa

Last year in Germany at a town hall in Leipzig there was a game music concert played by the orchestra and some of the Final Fantasy scores were played. This year there is another concert scheduled in the same location, for game music. — Nobuo Uematsu

Every time that I hear the orchestra tuning up, I get chills all over my body. You know, catharsis after catharsis. It's better than sex! — Rosie O'Donnell

Blindly, Grace pushed away from the velvet-lined wall...

Right into the path of a giant as tall and as hard as an oak.

A firm hand caught her about the waist as strong fingers captured her wrists. She blinked the sting of unshed tears from her eyes to find herself entangled not with an oak, but with a man possessed of dark brown hair and dangerous golden eyes. A wry smile curved his lips as the orchestra began the opening strains of a waltz. — Erica Ridley

Oh don't concern yourself about that," Cassandra said earnestly. "Pandora's not going to marry at all. And I certainly wouldn't want a man who would scorn me just because my sister was a strumpet."
"I like that word," Pandora mused. "Strumpet. It sounds like a saucy musical instrument."
"It would liven up an orchestra," Cassandra said. "Wouldn't you like to hear the Vivaldi Double Strumpet Concerto in C? — Lisa Kleypas

Tanglewood [summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra] was a place where gods strode the earth. — Sarah Caldwell

The Russian composers, especially, tricked the symphony orchestra into the kind of dynamic, rhythmic thing. — Gerry Mulligan

I've done shows with orchestras, and I like writing with orchestras. — Bryan Ferry

I think this orchestra's strengths involve drama and voice. — James Levine

Anyone could be in the orchestra, or sports team, or arts club at my school. It was precisely the kind of inclusivity that now meets with a sort of scorn and derision as a prizes-for-all culture that generates only mediocrity. There's something so insulting about the idea that including lots of people means mediocrity. — Elizabeth Price

I am lucky to have the greatest band and when you add a symphony orchestra to the mix it brings all of my songs to a whole new level. I wouldn't say I really change what I do but, having those talented musicians behind me, along with my band, really makes the songs so much bigger and more fun to sing. — Olivia Newton-John

Music is the most important thing. I'm thinking of my future. There has to be something new, and I want to be part of it. I want to lead an orchestra with excellent musicians. I want to play music which draws pictures of the world and its space — Jimi Hendrix

All the stories and poems and letters and oracles and wisdom verses of God's Word, like individual instruments in a great orchestra, serve THE WHOLE story. — James MacDonald

Playing in an orchestra is completely different to playing on my own.
Sometimes I played, sometimes listened; instead of waiting my turn, I sometimes interrupted another player, sometimes I argued, sometimes agreed.
My flute is my mouthpiece and I felt as if I was actually joining in a conversation. — Kevin Crossley-Holland

Her fingers flew, her fiddle was an entire orchestra, and every note beautifully brought into being struck a chord of satisfaction within her. She wondered at the unfamiliar lightness in her chest and realised she was laughing.
So great was her focus, it took her a while to register the strange expression that crept to Brocker's face as he listened, finger tapping the armrest of his chair. His eyes were fixed behind Fire and to the right, in the direction of Archer's back doorway. Fire comprehended that someone must be standing in Archer's entrance, someone Brocker watched with startled eyes.
And then everything happened at once. Fire recognised the mind in the doorway; she spun around, fiddle and bow screeching apart; she stared at Prince Brigan leaning against the door frame. — Kristin Cashore

Only when every one of us and every nation learns the secret of love for all mankind will the world become a great orchestra, following the beat of the Greatest Conductor of all. — Artur Rodzinski

I grew up playing in youth orchestras, so they were my most treasured memories, so to be in front of an orchestra playing my own material would be incredible. — Laura Mvula

It was so much fun conducting an orchestra and watching the musicians' faces as some of Kanye's lyrics went by. They couldn't believe what was going on. — Jon Brion

He had not been in El Paso for years, and they had developed it considerably since then, he'd heard, along the lines of sin and salvation. They had churches and a Republican or two and a smart of banks and a symphony orchestra and five railroads and a lumberyard and the makings of a library. So much for sin. On the side of salvation they had ninety-some saloons, just shy of one for every hundred citizens, although municipal goodyism had moved the gambling rooms out back or upstairs. — Glendon Swarthout

We are all an instrument with a special notation to our individual identity. When you incorporate many beautiful notes together, you envelop a harmonious orchestra. — Steven Cuoco

The trouble with women in an orchestra is that if they're attractive it will upset my players and if they're not it will upset me. — Thomas Beecham

The New York Philharmonic is a tremendous opportunity, a great orchestra. — Zubin Mehta

It's been a thrilling journey - I have had to really learn that an orchestra is an entity - it's a creature. I have been calling it the dragon and the conductor is the dragon tamer. And you just have to ... ride and don't let go and you will be fine. — Tori Amos

The musician writes for the orchestra what his inner voice sings to him; the painter rarely relies without disadvantage solely upon the images which his inner eye presents to him; nature gives him his forms, study governs his combinations of them. — Hermann Ebbinghaus

Duke Ellington's career traces the entire history of jazz. The repertoire associated with him contains the most important elements in the music and provides concrete examples of some of the best ways to present the music in the widest variety of settings-radio, TV, recordings, movies, concert halls, festivals, solo, small ensemble, big band, symphony orchestra, opera, Broadway shows ... You name it, he did it! — Billy Taylor

I recorded the song live in front of an orchestra, and yes, I was very moved, I was in tears. — Burt Bacharach

I love working with an orchestra, but there are many ways to make music. — Howard Shore

The most uplifting music in the world is that of Mother Natures orchestra.
Sit atop a hill or mountain, with a fabulous view and listen ...
Hear the winds song, the birds chorus, and the far off sound of childrens laughter and song and the sounds of life that you can soundtrack to your own playlists. — Michelle Geaney

Except for the violin pieces and a few of my orchestra pieces, all of my works from the Passacaglia on relate to the death of my mother. — Anton Webern

Fresh proof of the risks you run in writing about players, and of the advisability of not standing to leeward of their self-esteem when one has had the misfortune to wound it in the slightest degree. When you criticize a singer, you do not have his colleagues up in arms against you. Indeed, they generally feel that you have not been severe enough. But the virtuoso instrumentalist who belongs to a well-known musical organization always claims that in criticizing him you are 'insulting' the whole institution, and though the contention is absurd he sometimes succeeds in making the other players believe it. — Hector Berlioz

I heard Joby Talbot's Hovercraft piece for orchestra and felt its immediate physical impact - visceral, unsettling, hungry and direct. These short five minutes became our keystone to unlocking a strangely seductive score that tensions the aggressive force of the White Stripes with the enigmatic beauty of Talbot's own compositions. — Wayne McGregor

One thing I could never stand was to see a filthy dirty old drunky howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blurp blurp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts;I could never stand to see anyone like that. whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real old like this one was. — Anthony Burgess

What love is to the heart, appetite is to the stomach. The stomach is the conductor that leads and livens up the great orchestra of our emotions. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

You play those dimples like an exquisite orchestra, Mr. Boomer. — Grace Willows

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra. — Gerry Mulligan

A conductor should reconcile himself to the realization that regardless of his approach or temperament the eventual result is the same-the orchestra will hate him. — Oscar Levant

'American Music' is an inventive, passionate, pithy novel whose major theme is love itself and whose minor theme, music, is an emotional, meaningful counterpoint. Like Count Basie and His Orchestra, this book swings. — Kate Christensen

Ten years ago I saw a documentary on the siege of that Moscow theater. After just forty-eight hours of the terrorists confining the hostages to their seats with no sleep, the lights blazing and being forced to pee their pants-although if the had to shit, they could do so in the orchestra pit-well,more than a few hostages just stood up and walked to the exit knowing they'd get shot in the back. Because the were DONE. — Maria Semple

There's not an orchestra in the world that doesn't have weaknesses. None of us can play everything well. The repertoire is just too big. — Leonard Slatkin

Actors want to work with you but they want you to do their thing. Actors, whom I love with a blind partiality, sometimes they want to be soloists in the symphony, not a part of the orchestra. — James Gray

Very often, if I know the orchestra doesn't know a piece or it's a new piece, I have main ideas about it. But then we start to play and I never talk about places where they played so beautiful and so clear in the beginning that there is nothing to say. — Kurt Masur

I always admired very much the virtuosity in Strauss because, really, he's a master of using the orchestra. And I like virtuosity, I must say, even if the taste of the music is not always mine. — Pierre Boulez

Girl gets; girl gets; girl gets. Not that she is granted things but that things keep happening to her, until they don't - until she starts doing unto others as they have done, hurting everyone who ever hurt her, moving the world with her mind, conducting its objects like an orchestra. — Leslie Jamison

My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances; we've become the most famous bad orchestra in the world. — Alexander McCall Smith

We are all musicians in a great human orchestra, and it is now time to play the Save the World Symphony. You are not required to play a solo, but you are required to know what instrument you hold and play it as well as you can. You are required to find your place in the score. What we love we must protect. That's what love means. From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the obligation to act. — Sandra Steingraber

I do like alternative rock and rap, but as far as inspirational, then I go full-on orchestra. It fills up your entire being. — Osric Chau

They'd lived their lives on tightropes, never knowing where the next paycheck was coming from or if one was coming at all, their personal lives a mishmash of backstage affairs and dressing room brawls endured for the brief heady adrenaline rush brought by the orchestra's overture and glare of white lights. — Michael Callahan